


Strange Days

by seekingsquake



Series: Beautiful Midnight [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Feels, Bruce has never really had a home before, Gen, M/M, and everything is weird for him, and he'd like one, song fic sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:43:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each day is stranger than the last. But Bruce doesn't mind too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Days

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the song Strange Days by Matthew Good.
> 
> I am not affiliated with Marvel, or Matthew. I don't own anything except a cool Pez dispenser and a couple albums.  
> Please do not repost or reupload this piece anywhere without consent. If you ask, I'm sure we can work something out :]

Six months was a long time for Bruce to have stayed in one place. Even before the accident that changed everything, he was a little bit of a nomad. In university he drifted between his dorm room, the dorm Betty shared with Amelia, and some of their friend’s apartments. They used to joke about the fact that Bruce would probably become a professional couch surfer. When he and Betty moved from Boston out to Willowdale, Bruce had been so hesitant to buy a house, so concerned about the idea of planting roots.

“We’re not even married,” he’d said to her.

She had just laughed. “We don’t need to be married to buy a house together, Babe! Besides, we’ve been dating for what? Ten years? We could get married tomorrow if you wanted.”

They hadn’t gotten married then, but they had bought a little house not too far from the university. It was a cute little two storey with big bay windows facing the street, a Juliette balcony off the master bedroom, and a small pond in the back yard. Bruce could see them having a dog and raising a couple of kids in that house, and wasn’t that just about the most frightening thing he’d ever thought about?

But Bruce didn’t spend a lot of time in the house. As soon as he and Betty got out there and settled in, he was teaching physics to university students and drafted onto that military contract. He spent most of his time on campus, often falling asleep in his office or in the lab. The majority of the four years he lived in Virginia were spent under the white fluorescent lights of the university with military men hovering over his shoulder. He flitted between different labs to the point where no one was really sure if he knew what he was doing. It made them nervous, which in turn made him nervous, which had tensions between them all on the rise. Then the accident happened and he was gone before he had the time to really process what had transpired.

When Bruce was on the run, it was rare for him to stay in one place for more than a handful of weeks, let alone months. It was mostly by accident that he’d spent nearly a year in the slums of India before Agent Romanoff dragged him to New York. An accident that, after he realized he was being monitored, Bruce was determined would not happen again. But after the battle had finished, after Hulk had given Bruce back his body and this ragtag, time-bomb of a team had eaten shawarma, Bruce had passed out in the passenger seat of Tony Stark’s convertible.

When he’d awoken, he was laid out on a couch with his head in a lap and his feet in a different lap. His whole body had jerked, and he was on his feet and halfway out the door before he even knew where he was, let alone where he was going. “Whoa, Buddy, hey! Relax!”

Tony Stark calling him Buddy as if he knew him, as if they were friends, stopped him dead in his tracks. And his momentary pause was all that Stark needed. Before Bruce could restart himself, the engineer was already practically hanging off of him, half pushing half dragging him back into the room. “Bruce, Buddy, you can’t just run off on me like that, man! You didn’t even say hi to Pepper! Say hi to Pepper.”

Bruce shot a nervous glance at the couch, spotted a pretty strawberry blonde in cutoffs and a white t-shirt, and mumbled, “Hi Pepper,” without looking her in the eyes. She was beautiful, exactly the type of woman he’d imagine Stark would hang around with, and she’d been holding his feet in her lap like it was no big deal. He was embarrassed and uncomfortable and he just wanted to leave, but Stark’s hand felt heavy on his shoulder and he couldn’t make his feet or his tongue obey his frazzled mental commands. So Stark had swept him back into the penthouse and cajoled him into staying for dinner, then for the night, and then Bruce was waking up in the spare bedroom almost six months later.

Even after six months, Bruce still awoke each morning thinking it was strange.

✧✧✧

Tony called Bruce his best friend, his Science Bro, his platonic soul mate, Big Guy, Buddy. Pepper called Bruce “the only sane person Tony’s picked up since me”, Sweetheart, Doc. They adopted him into their home, made sure he was well fed and well rested, bought him clothes and scientific machinery, gave him more than he could ever even dream of asking for. But the easy acceptance, the almost frivolous generosity of the couple made it hard for Bruce to trust them, because the last time someone had been so nice to him he got tied into a contract he didn’t want, doing something that definitely wasn’t in the job description, and then was cast aside and hunted like a fox on the English countryside. He flinches at Tony’s friendly hands on his shoulders at the close of a long day, shivers through the duration of Pepper’s goodbye hugs before she leaves to Asia for a series of business meetings, and he runs away when either of them try to look him in the eye for more than a heartbeat.

Bruce knows that they see it in him. He knows that they can feel his fear thrumming under his skin when they touch him, but they do not shy away from it. They frown, but not at him, never at him, and he doesn’t know why they’re putting in so much of an effort to make nomadic, vagabond, monstrously frightened Bruce Banner feel safe here.

Safe.

Here.

The words tumble around in his head as if they were phrases in a language that he’s heard but never spoken, and he can bet that they’d feel heavy on his tongue if he forced his voice to give them life. But he keeps his mouth shut and just lets the words tumble, because every time he speaks, every time he makes a sound that indicates contentment, hope, or comfort, it gets ripped away from him by something huge and green.

Sometimes Bruce experiences an all encompassing jealousy that is directed at literally every other living being he can fathom. Because they get to live and experience things and feel the full extent of their emotions. They get to have things of their own. When Hulk bursts from his skin with next to no reason or warning, Bruce wonders if Hulk feels a similar jealousy. He wonders if it’s directed at him, because even though he’s trapped, at least he’s trapped on the outside.

Safe.

Here.

And so he keeps the words in his head, hopes that maybe Hulk can taste them, and prays that he won’t be dissatisfied by Bruce’s sacrifice and takes it all away from him anyway. He feels himself going insane with the desire to keep what little he has. He knows he’s crazy to want even this much, even for a little while. But it doesn’t stop him from wanting.

✧✧✧

Bruce comes back to himself with a groan, a squint, and a shiver. He wonders _where are my glasses_ but he says, “Where are my pants?” and then there is a pair of shorts flung at his face from above. Tony is standing over him, grinning that Cheshire Cat grin of his, and both Clint and Steve are at his shoulder, watching Bruce with blue eyes in creamy white faces. He continues to squint, and groans again as he tries to sit up, and he is uncomfortable but so very relieved.

He wonders if this is what it’s like to crawl back to health from a disease that was supposed to kill you, if this is what it feels like when the doctor says, “You’re going to be okay,” but your body hasn’t yet caught up to that fact and you still feel sick and dying even though you’re not anymore. And then Bruce laughs. It is hoarse and strained, but a laugh nonetheless, and he knows that the others must be looking at him with wary nervousness. He knows they don’t see what’s so funny. And it’s not funny, not really, but more of an ironic twist that amuses a dark, angry part of his psyche. The part that Hulk was borne of, maybe.

When he was mortal and squishy and just as likely to die being hit by a bus as anyone else, Bruce didn’t often think of his own mortality. He didn’t ponder his own life and eventual death, didn’t think much about anyone else’s either, for that matter. But ever since he became the vessel for something that was invulnerable to disease or injury, something that couldn’t be murdered no matter how many times different parties had tried, how many times he himself had tried, Bruce thought about death a lot. Still not his own too often, but the usage of death as metaphor, images of deaths he might one day encounter in the people around him, deaths that may or may not apply to Thor or Steve, flashes of deaths he’d witnessed, maybe only in nightmares but maybe as memories. And it was amusing in a twisted sort of way because he thought about death a fair amount for a guy who may never die. He wasn’t sure if old age would claim him like it claimed everyone else lucky enough to have a death so natural. Maybe each of his transformations would prevent any such damage caused by something such as aging. But maybe each transformation was shaving years off his life due to the physical demands of it. He didn’t know.

All he knew for sure was that it was painful, and he still needed his glasses.

He thinks about his own mortality on the quinjet as it flies them all home. The thinks about pulling himself out of ditches and standing on his own feet, and being relieved even though there is a painful ache deep in the core of all his joints, all his bones, all his muscles. He wonders if this is what a slow death feels like, and wonders how many more strange days lie ahead before the call of death drags him under.

He wonders if maybe he is too broken for even the Grim Reaper to want.

✧✧✧

Pepper leaves at the end of a battle with no intention of returning.

Tony was drowning himself in whiskey in an attempt to forget everything, and Pepper had screamed, “I don’t know if you’re dead, or dying, or trying to...,” and Tony had snorted and kept drinking. Then Pepper, lovely, beautiful Pepper, had turned tearful eyes on Bruce and stared at him long and hard. He thought maybe it was a cry for help, or maybe she was looking for validation, he didn’t know, but when she finally turned away from him he was sure she hadn’t found whatever it was she’d been looking for.

He doesn’t know what she ever expected of him, but he knows he’s let her down somehow.

It is a few hours later and Tony has stopped drinking. He is sprawled out on the couch, with Bruce reluctantly sprawled out parallel to him on the floor. His voice isn’t even slurred as he says, “I know why we get along so well.”

He sounds serious, more serious than Bruce has ever heard him. “Oh?”

Bruce hears Tony’s head nodding against the fabric of the couch before he hears Tony’s voice say to him, “It’s because we’re both big, fat liars.”

Bruce thinks about that for what feels like a long time before he whispers, “What if I don’t want to be a liar anymore?” He doesn’t expect Tony to hear him.

Tony does. “Then tell the truth.”

And Bruce... wants to. He wants to do that. He’s scared, and it takes him a minute for him to figure out what the truth really is for him, and it feels both very small and very big. He looks up to see Tony looking down at him, and he wonders if he starts telling the truth if Tony will follow his lead or if Tony will stop being close to him, and he wonders if that’s maybe what happened to Pepper. But now that he’s narrowed in on his truth, now that he’s been given permission to speak it aloud, he doesn’t think he can keep it inside himself any longer. He says, “I want to stay,” and his voice is shaking, and he thinks his hands probably are too, but he doesn’t lift them from the floor to check.

Tony’s eyes soften, as does the rest of his whole body, and he lets his hand drift down and brush against Bruce’s forehead. “I want that, too.”

Bruce isn’t one hundred percent sure, but he thinks that that sounds a lot like the truth.

He looks up at the ceiling, fights the urge to swat Tony’s hand away, and he can see the days lining up and stretching out before him. Hundreds, maybe thousands of days, all strange, all coming for him. He thinks he used to be scared of it. He thinks maybe Hulk did, too. But now neither of them are, and he laughs, soft and quiet, and Tony echos him, and it’s not as strange as it probably should be.


End file.
